From the age of 3 and a half, Mariette Rozen knew only death, loneliness, darkness. It was 1939 in Brussels and the war brought an abrupt end to what few memories she has of ever being a child. She was orphaned at the age of 8, left to fend for herself in an unforgiving world where she had to hide her Jewish background, and her emotions in order to survive. Her eldest daughter Cathy sets out to learn her mother's story for the first time, hoping to understand her own feelings as a neglected child. CBC producer Lynn Glazier presents Marie's story which mirrors that of more than a thousand other orphaned children of the Holocaust that made their way to Canada after the war.